


The Shadow of the Mockingjay

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 23:31:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Maysilee Donner's fate in the Quarter Quell affected Madge Undersee's childhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shadow of the Mockingjay

Throughout her life, Madge Undersee had grown up under the shadow of the mockingjay.

She didn’t talk about it with her friends, not that she had many really, apart from maybe Katniss Everdeen sometimes. Sometimes she wondered whether she should, because if people knew they might understand her better. Madge had seen the look on Gale’s face the day of the reaping for the 74th Hunger Games, when she’d made that comment about wanting to look nice if she had to go to the Capitol. She’d known it was stupid pretty much as soon as she’d said it, known how it must have sounded to Gale, this guy who’d had to start providing for his family ever since his father had died in that explosion, the guy who was always trying to make sure his siblings didn’t go hungry. She knew that his name must be down a lot more than hers, that realistically he stood a lot more chance of actually having to go to the Capitol, and Gale wouldn’t care about something so trivial as what he was wearing. If Madge had thought there had been time, she might have gone after Gale and Katniss, explained why she had said that, that she was just trying to joke to make herself feel better about the possibility that her entire family dreaded every time the reapings came around ever since she was old enough to be included. She acknowledged that maybe she couldn’t understand Gale that well, given that she had been brought up as the mayor’s daughter, not wanting for anything. What could she know of what it was like to be one of the kids from the Seam? But at the same time, maybe they didn’t understand what it was to be her, either.

Whenever anyone in District 12 ever talked about the Fiftieth Hunger Games, naturally they talked about the fact that Haymitch Abernathy had won, one of the only two people ever to bring District 12 any glory by winning. But no one ever talked about Maysilee Donner. Why would they? Madge’s own family hadn’t talked about her at one time. Madge had first found out about her one time when she asked her father why her mother always took to her bed when the Hunger Games was on. She must have been seven years old at the time, because it was the year that Finnick Odair won. Her father had then explained to her about how her mother had had a twin, called Maysilee, who had been picked as tribute one year but had not survived. The shock of losing Maysilee had destroyed Madge’s mother, who had never been the same since. She had not even been able to face the sight of Maysilee’s pet canary, which had ended up having to be given to her best friend. Madge had heard her parents arguing later, her father trying to say that it would help her to talk about it more. Her mother hadn’t taken that advice. She continued to bottle things up, not talking about Maysilee, continuing to make herself ill. 

On the first day of school, Mrs. Undersee managed to drag herself out of bed long enough to take Madge there, and had pointed out her best friend from childhood, the mother of another girl in Madge’s grade whose name Madge later learned was Katniss Everdeen. After that conversation with her father, Madge realised that Mrs. Everdeen must have known Maysilee, too. Madge started seeking out Katniss’s company a bit more after that, but she never mentioned the connection and Katniss never mentioned it either. Maybe she doesn’t know, Madge had thought at the time, since the two saw a lot less of each other now. Or maybe Katniss knew about Maysilee and just chose not to bring it up, so Madge didn’t either.

When the girls were eleven years old, Katniss’s father was killed in a mine explosion, and her mother retreated inside herself in a similar way to that in which Madge’s mother had. Madge would sit with Katniss at lunch and part of her really wanted to tell her friend that she understood, that things were much the same with her mother. But at the same time, she knew that she could never fully understand what it was like to be Katniss, because she still had her father, because she was never likely to know what it was like to have to be the one providing for the family. So she carried on going through the motions, trying to act as normal as she could around Katniss. After Katniss returned from the Hunger Games, she admitted to Madge that she’d appreciated being treated normally. Katniss knew by this point that Mrs. Undersee spent a lot of time in bed, but she’d become so used to it that she no longer questioned it, and Madge didn’t think it was the time to bring up the reasons why. 

Madge had often wondered what Maysilee had been like. Since her mother wouldn’t talk, and she didn’t know Mrs. Everdeen well enough to ask, it was always difficult to find out. Old repeats of past Hunger Games were often on the television, but they didn’t go back quite that far, even though Maysilee’s year had been a Quarter Quell. If it were ever to come on, Madge suspected her father would try and avoid their watching it (the old repeats weren’t mandatory viewing in the way that the current Games were. Sometimes, Mrs. Undersee didn’t even watch the mandatory scheduled viewing – with their standing in the District 12 community, no one questioned it if it was ever stated that she was too ill to watch, even though in her position the Capitol would have argued that she should be setting an example.) And Haymitch Abernathy frightened her when she was younger, when he’d stagger out on stage at the reaping, shout something incoherent at the crowd, vomit all over the floor or pass out at Effie Trinket’s feet (he had been known to do all three). He was the only other person in District 12 who Madge knew had known Maysilee, but she didn’t feel she could ask him. Even if it wasn’t the case that she only really saw him at the reapings and was scared of him, he probably didn’t want to go over the whole thing again. It was most likely the reason why the guy drank in the first place. Madge wondered who Maysilee would have become had she been the victor that year; would she still have been the girl her mother remembered, or would she have become a drunk like Haymitch? Eventually, Madge’s father had told her that Haymitch had comforted Maysilee in her dying moments, and Madge started to realise that there was another side to him than was normally presented at the Reapings.

Everyone Madge knew in District 12 had dreaded the day when they were old enough to be reaped, even if not everyone actually came out and said so. She remembered that one kid in her grade, who was related in some way to a previous tribute, had been worried that that would make him more likely to be picked. Katniss had been the one to say that she didn’t think there was any such pattern with the relatives of anyone who didn’t win. Everyone knew that the selection of tributes who were the children of victors happened too often to be coincidental, but nobody dared to comment on it publicly. Madge had kept out of that conversation, knowing instinctively that her mother wouldn’t want her talking about their family business at school. But she had to admit that she’d been thinking along the same lines as that kid, and had been relieved to hear Katniss’s answer, latching on to it as gospel in the hope that it was true. 

Every year, when it came time for the reaping, Madge would pin Maysilee’s mockingjay pin to her dress so that if she was chosen, she’d have a little piece of her aunt with her, to help her keep her faith. She knew that Maysilee had made it to the final five, which was even more of an achievement than it would usually be since that was the year that twice the number of tributes were reaped. Madge would have liked to think that she would have Maysilee’s courage if she were ever selected, but she knew that she’d never know for sure until she was actually placed in that situation. And she also knew that her mother really wouldn’t be able to handle it if Madge were reaped. In another conversation about the reapings at school one time, a girl from the Seam who Madge had never really liked had made some stupid comment about whether Madge was somehow managing to get out of the reapings because of being the mayor’s daughter. Madge knew that if there was any way her family could have fixed that, then her father would have done so, so her mother wouldn’t have to go through it again, but that it was out of his hands. She also knew that the comment had come out of anger about the fact that Madge only had a few entries while this girl had been signing up for tesserae from the word go. A lot of people must have secretly resented her for that, but all Madge could do was plaster the big fake smile on her face, ignore comments like that as much as possible, cross her fingers for the odds being in her favour, breathe a sigh of relief that whoever was chosen were people she didn’t really know, then watch it on autopilot, go through the motions of supporting District 12 whilst trying to disconnect herself mentally from the Games so she didn’t have to think “Is this what happened? Is this how Aunt Maysilee died?” (She’d eventually found out what really happened to her by accident after overhearing something her mother had shouted in her sleep after a screaming nightmare). Why not disconnect herself? That strategy had worked for her mother, after all, all the years she’d been emotionally distant with Madge. Mayor Undersee had explained that it was her way of dealing with her very real fears of losing Madge in the same way as Maysilee, but that hadn’t made it any easier for Madge to deal with. There had been one time when Madge hadn’t been sure she would have cared at all, and it was only in the last couple of years that she had understood that in fact, her mother had cared too much.

The year that Katniss Everdeen went was the only year that anyone Madge really knew had been chosen. She knew Peeta a little, too, but they weren’t close. She’d vowed to herself that if any of her friends ever got chosen, she’d give them her aunt Maysilee’s pin. Katniss told her afterwards that she had had a near miss with having it confiscated, since some people had thought the pin could potentially be used as a weapon. Part of Madge wished she hadn’t told her that, since the idea flashed through her mind just for a moment that maybe if Maysilee had tried to use it that way, she might have been the victor. Then she dismissed that. It obviously wasn’t that effective, since Katniss was allowed it in the end. And she knew it was time to stop thinking that way. What happened, happened. 

Madge just hoped that one day her mother would come to understand that, too.

Mrs. Undersee took to her bed again the day Katniss volunteered to take Prim’s place. She’d said afterwards that she had regretted every day since Maysilee’s death that she hadn’t volunteered to take her twin’s place, that she had not shown the same courage that Katniss had. Mayor Undersee had tried to tell her not to feel guilty, that she shouldn’t think that way. In a way, Madge could understand why her mother felt that way. But if her mother had volunteered in Maysilee’s place, there was every chance that Haymitch would still have won, and then Madge would never have existed, at least not in this form, and she wasn’t sure quite how she was meant to feel about that. Her mother then went on to question fate, wondering why it was Maysilee whose name had been pulled out and not hers. Their names were in the reaping ball equally as many times, the odds of either name being pulled out were just the same. The odds had technically been in Madge’s mother’s favour that day, yet Mrs. Undersee no longer felt that she was the fortunate one.

Madge watched the Games that year hoping the mockingjay pin would be worn by the victor. Katniss had to win, for her family, for District 12, and Madge felt in a way, for Maysilee too.


End file.
